House on Fire Ruins A

Location: Also known as Firehouse Ruins. Let's use Blanding UT as our reference point. Head south out of town on SR 191. Four miles to the south, turn west on SR 95 and go about 18 miles. Between highway markers 102 and 101 you will see the turnoff to the trailhead of South Mule Canyon. It is NOT well marked. If you get to the sign marking Mule Canyon ruins with a restroom and an Anasazi ruin exhibit, you've gone too far. The trailhead road is about 1/4-1/2 mile east of that exhibit. The trailhead turnoff road is dirt. A signboard may be seen about 100 yards from the road (fill in and pay for permits for hiking the north and south forks). Park in the area about 50 ft. from the signboard. The trailhead for south is 0.3 miles from SR 95 located to the left (west) at the bottom of the hill where you parked. NOTE: The coordinates below, while accurate, will not deliver you to the precise location when entered into Google Earth. They will put you in the vicinity, you'll have to adjust the location manually from there.

Find the location: Copy the coordinates below. Open Google Earth, paste the coordinates into "Fly To" and click on the magnifying glass.

Turnoff to trailhead:

37° 32’ 12.74” N
109° 44’ 14.38” W

Trailhead:

37° 32’ 14.73” N
109° 43’ 55.05” W

Equipment: EOS 1Ds Mark III with 24mm TS lens with polarizer. ISO 50 f22 for 4 seconds.

Digital imaging/manipulation: HDR using Photomatrix 4.0. See below for white balance.

Notes: From the trailhead, House on Fire is almost exactly one mile heading west along the stream that runs through the canyon. By our count, the trail crosses the stream about 13 times before a short path splits off to HOF. Keep your eye on the north wall of the canyon. A path will turn off the trail to the right and go up the rock face about 40 feet. Don't expect a sign, you might get a rock cairn. The house is impressively small (about 5 feet tall), but then again, so were the Anasazi (about 4 feet tall). Still, they've got more buildings in the Four Corners area than Starbuck's. You may be discouraged the find that the colors of the ruin are rather flat tan and beige. Turn off auto white balance (AWB) and go to custom white balance. Turn the WB up to 7000K or higher and take a picture to determine where your setting should be. We shot at 8000K to 9000K. Oddly enough, the AWB on our point-and-shoot gave us the same color as the photo above. There are several ruins in north and south branches of Mule Canyon. (See Kelsey MR; Canyon Hiking Guide to the Colorado Plateau) We didn't go further up the canyon, we decided to look for a Starbuck's.

House on Fire Ruin:

37° 32’ 37.21” N
109° 44’ 40.24” W